Direct Action posts

For over a century now all sorts of social democrats, Stalinists and Trotskyists have espoused the view that the state can be used to bring about a communist society through reforms and/or seizing the state on behalf of the workers. This has often been dubbed by libertarian communists as “state socialism”. One of the staple demands of this statist strategy is the nationalisation of banks and other industries, bringing them under the direction of the state. This is usually disguised in leftist terms like “public” or “social” ownership, offering the illusion of a “worker’s state”.

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) is an umbrella term for a range of initiatives involving the private sector in operating public services. The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is the most frequently used. The key difference between PFI and conventional ways of providing public services is that the asset is not in public ownership. Instead, the public service provider makes an annual payment, like a mortgage, to the private company which provides the building and associated services. Whilst PFI projects are structured in different ways, there are usually four key elements – design, finance, build and operate.

Workers at Metronet, the former London Underground (LUL) engineering contractor, have developed their Strike Committee as a form of rank and file organisation that represents an interesting step beyond the confines of the usual trade union structures. Now that the track contract is back in house, they are rolling this organising model out across the whole of the underground to become the London Underground Strike Committee. Here we look at the background of struggle against which the strike committee has been built up, and the bottom up tactics that have been vital to its successes.

Historically, the RMT’s strength on the underground had been among train drivers and station staff. Engineering workers had been the poor relations, and the union had relied on drivers to win disputes.

All predictions point to how the current crisis will hit Britain much harder than Brown and Darling care to admit. Understandably, working people are angry at the loss of security, livelihoods and, for some, even their homes. Beyond doubt, however, is the fact that this cost will rise even further in the years to come as the state tries to force us to pay for the billions it has borrowed and is still doling out to the rich and powerful.

In what will amount to a gigantic wealth transfer, the state bails out the bosses with one hand, while with the other it calculates how best it might claw this back in the future. One thing is certain; no government, whether Tory or Labour, will inflict undue pain on the so called “wealth producers”, the capitalist class. So the tax rises, cats in wages, attacks on services and benefits and the rest will fall disproportionately on us, the working class.

In virtually every sphere of our modern lives, we are systematically alienated, or separated, from each other by powerful forces. These forces pervade our work, leisure, cultural and social relationships. On a micro level, the prevalence of problems such as crime, anti-social behaviour and the breakdown of community are all symptomatic of this. On the macro level, this alienation manifests itself in acts of war, poverty, imperialism and environmental decimation. Although mainstream opinion usually paints all these problems as separate and distinct, they are all inextricably linked to capitalism and hierarchical power. Throughout the course of history, these mutually dependent entities have reinforced each other in the interests of powerful elites. By doing so, they have cynically negated our collective intellectual, moral and human qualities.

This collection of articles charts the tragic story of Salvador Puig Antich, a Catalan anarchist who was the final victim of the executioner’s garrotte in Franco’s Spain. The pieces, including several by Spanish and Catalan anarchists, also detail Puig Antich’s legacy and attempts to expropriate it by those who did not share his ideals.

His political journey began early, his family being steeped in democratic Catalan nationalism and opposition to the forces of Spain’s right, which they saw as a lethal threat to Catalonia’s identity and integrity. Yet it was the events of May 1968 in Paris and the armed actions of ETA which are generally acknowledged to have inspired Puig Antich to become actively involved in the fight against the Spanish dictatorship in the late 1960s. From initially supporting communist inspired workers’ groups, he embraced anarchism and joined a fledgling paramilitary organisation, the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación (MIL).

This overview of the main Uruguayan anarchist movement takes the form of various articles by and interviews with militants. It may be initially daunting for anyone not familiar with the subject, as the pieces which give a basic overview of the history only appear in the middle and at the end of the pamphlet. However, it is worth persevering as the story of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) is instructive.

Newsnight correspondent, Paul Mason’s Live Working or Die Fighting offers a unique, timely and engaging micro-historical account of the rise and fall of the revolutionary working class. Charting the conditions which gave rise to the mass syndicalist movements in Europe and the Americas during the early 20th century, contemporary parallels are drawn and interwoven with the experiences of workers in the newly industrialised “global south”.

Mason eulogises key inspirational figures from our past – figures like Louise Michel, Bill Haywood, Tom Paine – telling of bitter struggles fought with murderous bosses and implacable rulers. Latterly, he cites the post-war factors that have seen militant workers’ movements fall into seemingly irretrievable decline; welfarism and workforce stratification, to name but two.